The Tumblr I Distract Myself With To Avoid Writing

[biocrafthero]

perceived skill

[shouldbewritingnow]

One of my favorite tropes:

Character A who always sees the good in people with Character B who sees the bad. B could see how good of a person A was from the get go, while A saw the best in B. B protects A from those that would take advantage of them, and A helps B see the world with slightly less cynicism.

[mirkwoodest]

Obsessed with the fact that this really happened😳

[wan-shailu]

When I was a student at Oxford, both C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien were lecturing there, Lewis magnificently and Tolkien badly and inaudibly, and the climate of opinion was such that people explained Lewis’s children’s books by saying ‘It’s his Christianity, you know,’ as if the books were the symptom of some disease, while of Tolkien they said he was wasting his time on hobbits when he should have been writing learned articles…

I imagine I caused Tolkien much grief by turning up to hear him lecture week after week, while he was trying to wrap his lectures up after a fortnight and get on with The Lord of the Rings (you could do that in those days, if you lacked an audience, and still get paid). I sat there obdurately despite all his mumbling and talking with his face pressed up to the blackboard, forcing him to go on expounding every week how you could start with a simple quest-narrative and, by gradually twitching elements as it went along, arrive at the complex and entirely different story of Chaucer’s Pardoner’s Tale – a story that still contains the excitement of the quest-narrative that seeded it. What little I heard of all this was wholly fascinating.

– Diana Wynne Jones

[shouldbewritingnow]

[crafblr]

btw I’ve found these stretches from the WAK blog very helpful when knitting a lot:

Plus make sure to take breaks regularly - and stop if anything starts to hurt!

especially with gift knitting I know it can be tempting to push through it for a deadline, but it’s really not worth causing long term injury. (And anyone knit-worthy should be understanding of that, imho.) Stay well :)

[gingersnappish]

Also good for artists drawing with pencils/on a tablet/with a pen!

[not-poignant]

Also good for writers

[shouldbewritingnow]

What is something you accidentally put into everything you write?

[marypsue]

the self-indulgent fanfiction will continue until morale improves

[bisexualbaker]

The self-indulgent fanficiton will also continue after morale improves, just with better morale.

[emptyjunior]

Enough random notes that have a written story on them as environmental storytelling, explore the space, get crazier with it.

You move into a house and aw cute, it has the kids height on the walls but you notice there's a three foot difference in height between measurements, you check the date, they're a month apart. The final measurement is on the ceiling. It's dated two days ago.

You're part of a recovery team that have finally found a stranded ship, they were found too late and have all passed a long time ago. They all died of starvation. You enter their storeroom, it's filled with food. In the dining hall you find the tables laden with perfectly fine looking breads, cakes, cured meats, jams, candies. Your medic says all the people sitting at the table didn't eat a Thing.

You wake up in an apocalypse. You can't find anyone at all as you wander the streets but you do hear faint music playing from somewhere. You stumble into a supermarket, to see all the aisles still full, except for the shelf that was full of ear plugs, which look to be the only thing that was looted.

Like there's light, sound, props. Having a street where every house is decimated except for One. Landing on a planet known for having No Water and a plant is growing and you don't know where it could have possibly gotten moisture from but you can't find the citizens Anywhere.

I'm sorry, I'm just kinda over the "graffiti on the wall to show the bad guy is around". That's not environmental storytelling that's just normal story. Show me I'm in the villains territory by the rain suddenly cutting out above me as I'm driving, even though it's meant to be raining all night. I park the car and step out, and realise the constellations are Wrong, until I see they're Not constellations, they're the blinking lights of a massive ship-

I Will stop now because everytime I go to write a sentence it devolves into another prompt but I'm just saying we have a Lot of senses, engage them, show me the Environment in environmental storytelling.

[pocket-size-cthulhu]

Romeo and Juliet retelling but it's a married couple who are planning to carve time out of their busy schedules to go out together, but she decides to take a little nap to try to get more energy to stay up later, and when he finds her asleep he assumes she's gone to bed for real so he goes all the way to sleep (I'm talking sleep mask + vaporub + white noise + melatonin, or whatever routine people do for a REALLY good sleep) and when she wakes up from her nap and finds him out cold she just goes to bed too. Tragic 😔

[bethanydelleman]

I need to build a collection of these low-stakes Modern Shakespeare retellings

[phantomrose96]

*feels myself slipping* oh I NEED to write a fucked-up story

[eldritchdilf-deactivated2025061]

Contrary to popular belief the biggest beginner's roadblock to art isn't even technical skill it's frustration tolerance, especially in the age of social media. It hurts and the frustration is endless but you must build the frustration tolerance equivalent to a roach's capacity to survive a nuclear explosion. That's how you build on the technical skill. Throw that "won't even start because I'm afraid it won't be perfect" shit out the window. Just do it. Just start. Good luck.

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

remember that when it comes to fanfics, two cakes is always better then one. the more the merrier!

[elbiotipo]

Fuck that post going around saying "you can have coffee in your story without justifying it :) you don't need to explain everything :)" I want, no, I DEMAND a fully researched ethnobotanical paper on every single food item in your work, if you don't explain to me where did potatoes come from in your fantasy setting or don't explain how the industry of coffee works over interstellar distances with full detail you are doing things wrong and I personally hate you and I hate your stupid story, fuck you

[elbiotipo]

Why are your stupid little wizards and knights eating potato stew in your dumb European middle ages fantasy world. Where did they get potatoes from. Where is the center of domestication of potatoes, do you have a fantasy Andean civilization? What are the social and economic consequences of having such a calorie rich crop in cold climates. I don't care about "themes" or "enemies to lovers with found family", I didn't ask about that. Where does your idiot space captain gets their shitty coffee from. Is it imported from Earth? Are there coffee growing worlds? Is it an alien species replacement with the same name? What are the social consequences of that? Don't try to change the subject, I'll stop pointing the gun when I want, I'm trying to have a conversation here,

[ever-so-slightly-monstrous]

gold in them there tags

[gr8writingtips]

writing tip #4067:

you don't need any skill to retell classic stories, you just need to be really, really horny

[booksandpaperss]

psa that there’s no reason to be shy or nervous abt commenting bc if an author genuinely did not want comments they would simply disable commenting on their end. if you have the capability to comment that means they’re welcome and that you should <3

[breha]

sometimes it’s They Would Not Fucking Get Married but sometimes it’s just They Would Not Have A Fucking Wedding. send those characters to the courthouse on a tuesday or so help me

[shouldbewritingnow]

I had a manager when I worked at a restaurant who was ordained to marry people, and during the height of Covid when we were just doing takeout orders, he married at least one couple in the parking lot restaurant parking lot. So, they don’t even really need a courthouse, they just need a couple people in the parking lot and some paperwork.

[ic17]

A Zealot of the 21st Century

———————————————————

Truth is sacred. There will always be the temptation to twist the Truth for the gain of one’s tribe, which I view so strongly negative about as for it to be a grave Sin commited against my beliefs.

I view people with platforms & followings who seek to inform others in a….clerical light, who are held to a higher standard as people who play a existentially *vital* role in society, where commiting the sacrilegious act of telling agenda-driven falsehoods cannot be tolerated.

In this digital age where tools of deception threaten the ideals of freedom & egalitarianism, those who resist the temptation to spread Lies & commit themselves to the findings-out of Truth;

Seeking to not only grasp Truth for themselves but also to redeem heretics; guiding them towards the Path;

Wading through the knee-deep torrent that is propaganda pervading the Web to do so, like the Knights Hospitaller in a Holy War many are unaware, or - more dammingly - actively turning a blind eye to.